Memories, Minnesota

Sacred Waters

Leave a comment

Mabon (Fall) and the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur. Sukkot. Simchat Torah. The seasons of Judaism. The Great Wheel. Its presence in liturgical calendars of all sorts. The Gunflint Trail. Grand Marais. Lutsen. Lake Superior. Pukaskwa National Park. Wawa. The U.P. Sault Ste Marie. The Edmond Fitzgerald and the Gales of November. The North Woods. Ely. The International Wolf Center. Mark and Mary both in Malaysia. My son back in Korea with Seoah and Murdoch.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gift giving

Kavannah for Tishrei, week 1: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Two trips completely around Lake Superior by car, visiting the true North Shore in Canada, in particular the Canadian National Park Pukaskwa with 700 square miles of roadless Wilderness and Wawa, the quirky little town where I first had poutine, and the bar there over which I stayed for a night each trip.

 

This bridge dangles over a wild River which empties into Lake Superior not far from this point, a Rocky Gorge contains its Rapids on both sides. It’s hiking distance from the only parking and I’ve made this hike several times. Never encountered another person.

Were I a true outdoorsman I would have hiked in and camped somewhere in this Wilderness. Instead I’ve always chosen to hike for a couple of hours first on a wooden walkway that crosses a large Marsh, then on a trail through a dense Pine Forest that leads to the bridge.

At different points Lake Superior is not far from the trail and its Waves crash against the Shore, not really a Beach here, instead made of fist sized chunks of polished Granite and Basalt. Being on the Superior Shore surrounded by miles and miles of protected Wilderness always brought me a calm inner state that lasted a long time.

Lake Superior has a sacred presence known by all who encounter her though they may not name the feeling that way. Her vastness, far from any Ocean, emerges after climbing a steep hill going into Duluth, shows itself along the Bob Dylan Highway 61 which many of us have revisited, and goes in and out of visibility on Canadian, Michigan, and Wisconsin roads as well. That there are lakers, huge cargo ships that carry taconite, coal, wheat, and corn, helps you understand the connected size of these Great Lakes.

Northern Minnesota’s Arrowhead region, the only area in the continental 48 to have never lost its population of wolves, lies always near the Great Lake. Its Wildness and Lake Superior’s sing to each other, a song of longing and beauty, of Winter Snow and Ice, of Wild Neighbors: Moose, Wolves, Whitetail Deer, White Fish, Northern Pike, Muskie, Pine Martens, Sturgeon, Minx, Beaver, Lynx, and Black Bears.

Inside my heart Lake Superior lives in its cold, deep, northern way. A constant reminder that there are places, sacred places, all over Mother Earth. A few I’ve been able to visit often enough to come to know at a heart level. In these latter years of my life the Rocky Mountains have become my sacred Wild Friends, too. How could I want a heaven when I’ve known so many already and live in one now.

 

 

Holidays, Judaism, Writing

Just Israel, walking his road

Leave a comment

Tuesday gratefuls: Cool night. 35 degrees this morning. Guanella Pass. Tom. Reading Jennie’s Dead. Revising to reenter. Writing. Thinking about writing before going to sleep. Ah. Good workout. Fixing my workouts myself. Vikings. Can they last? High Holy Days. Party like it’s 5785. CBE’s amphitheater. Outdoor services. Rosh Hashanah starts tomorrow evening. 5:30 pm service.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: L’Shana Tovah

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Ended my printout of Ancientrails on August 8, 2019, started on November 1 2007, missed two years due to shifting to WordPress and not figuring out Frontpage migration, plan to begin printout since 2019 on November 1; found my manuscript for Jennie’s Dead, started reading, already reconfiguring it, revising lightly, finding my way again on this ancientrail of imagination and creation. Slow.

 

 

Tishrei*, the head of the year, begins tomorrow evening, Rosh Hashanah. A new moon, a new month, and the time when Jewish Calendars turn over a full year, counting, traditionally, from the first day of creation until now. So, 5785 as a date reckons by generations from the first chapter of Genesis to current time. And no, no Jew I know thinks the world, the universe and everything came into existence 5785 years ago. Though I know a few Missouri Synod Lutherans who do.

Elul, the last month of the Jewish calendar year, ends tomorrow. With it the accounting of the soul, chasbon nefesh, that I’ve noted a bit about in earlier posts. Realized this morning that somehow my own accounting has led me back to the land of my soul. Huh. Back to the writerly Self who creates for the joy of imagining. Didn’t intend this result or even contemplate it, yet here I am. At the start of the New Year with an old purpose, yet a consistent purpose-for decades now.

I plan to attend the High Holiday services outside in the amphitheater, weather permitting. Less covid risk. The pandemic and my cancer treatments imprinted on me a nervousness about enclosed places with lots of people. I avoid them for health and by inclination. Introvert here, hey.

No resolutions. Neither on Rosh Hashanah nor Samain-the Celtic new year-nor on January 1st, the Gregorian new year. I’m good these latter days. These waning septuagenarian days. No more bulldozing the ego with this therapeutic maneuver or another. Especially not resolutions. I’m good, not perfect, but good enough. Content with who I am and who I have become. Also content with the ancientrail that got me here. Including the good, the bad, and the unnecessary.

Sure fine tuning the character traits through mussar. Can always use a shave and a haircut to clear away undergrowth. But self condemnation, radical changes to my sense of self? Done with all that. Here there be no monsters and no mythic heroes. Just Israel, walking his road.

Fortunate to have others who share the journey.

 

*”Tishrei (Tishri), the first month of the Jewish year (the seventh when counting from Nisan), is full of momentous and meaningful days of celebration. Beginning with the High Holidays, in this month we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Ten Days of Repentance, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah. Each one is filled with its own meaningful customs and rituals. Some are serious, awesome days set aside for reflection and soul-searching. Some are joyous days full of happy and cheerful celebration.”  Chabad

Art and Culture, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Letters, Literature, Myth and Story, Painting, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors, Writing

Wish me joy and persistence

Leave a comment

Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers on Ode’s art. Art. Painting. Water color. Cut paper. Paper marbling. Computer aided. Charcoal and pastels. Oils. Acrylic. Sculpture. Furniture design. Architecture. Music. Chamber music. Jazz. Writing. Novels. Short stories. Poems. Poets. Writers. Painters. Sculptors. Musicians. Movies and television. Story and image.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Uffizi

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Today I’m pulling out the 3/4’s finished first draft of Jennie’s Dead, plan to read it, red pencil in hand, waiting to reinsert myself into its flow, the story as I started it so many years ago, wanting to reclaim my life as a creator of worlds, of characters, of ideas expressed in things that would never have been and never could be without the mysterious work of creation. And, it is work.

 

Probably time, too, to print out Ancientrails from the point where I stopped the last time. Not sure how long ago it was, but it was awhile. Easy to check since I have the plastic tubs filled with the first printing, some two million words, stored on wire racks in the loft. I want, so badly, to get my mojo back. My writing mojo. I let it slide as I let myself get overwhelmed by the world of illness, hers and mine. The long, slow process of Kate’s dying. Didn’t have to let it go, but I did and I’ve sunk a bit since then, a light in my heart dimmed.

Going through the outer world of friends and family, Mountains and Streams and Wild Neighbors, of Judaism and the pandemic, of wrestling with back pain, often with little success. None of this bad or shallow or wrong. No. Necessary, kind, fulfilling. Yet the stream from which I had drunk so giddily for 20 years, the Andover years, dried up. The aquifer that fed it drained and not renewed.

Writing and my current worst ailment, a back preventing me from walking more than short distances, making work around the house often more than I can do, fit well together. I can do it like I’m writing this. And, I can keep at it, like Ode, until I reach the end. Why would I do that? For the same reason my brother-in-law, Jerry the painter and maker, is in a spasm of creativity knowing his heart could give out at any time. For the same reason Ode believes his best art is ahead of him. And now, ta da, a sports metaphor! To leave it all on the field. To have held nothing back. To have gone as far as I can. Not sure I know why beyond that. Please wish me joy and persistence.

This is then, a matter for teshuvah, for a return to the land of my soul. Yes, there’s that word again. Soul. Where is it? Don’t know. Is it a metaphor for the whole of me, an ensouled body and lev? Yes, but more, I believe. The something more is that which links my ensouled body and lev to the other ensouled entities like my friends, family, my Lodgepole Companion, Great Sol, Elk and Mule Deer, Shadow Mountain. We are together, moving forward in constant creation, unique and separate, yet whole and infinitely connected. Perhaps that which is there to bond with all does not die, but rolls on, moving with the rest toward an unknown future, probably one bound tightly to a known past.

Feelings, Holidays, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mountains, Mussar

Blood and Seawater

Leave a comment

Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Mark Odegard and his art, a retrospective. The Ancient Brothers. Consistent and persistent. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Geneva Creek. Clear Creek. The North Fork of the South Platte. Maxwell Creek. North Turkey Creek. Blue Creek. Upper Bear Creek. Lake Evergreen. Bear Creek. These last six all part of my Watershed. Shadow Mountain’s split Granite Aquifers. Where I get my Water for Shadow Mountain Home.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Act of Creation

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: On Friday I picked my way down a slight decline studded with Rocks, ahead of me Water spilled over them at speed and filled my ears with its soothing sound, as if it touched, and maybe it does, an ancient hominid memory of Water at last, at last, similar I imagine to the visual soothing offered by large bodies of Water like Lake Superior, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific; we are not Animals of the Water but we are not Animals at all without Water, the bond singing in our blood* and our internal supply of Water gauged and signaled when low by thirst.

Geneva Creek beside Guanella Pass Road

 

In this month of Elul, of chasbon nefesh, accounting of the soul, I ask you, reader, to pardon me if I have caused you injury either by word or deed, by commission or omission. This is a sincere request. If we need to talk to resolve something, please let me know. I wish to go into the days of awe with my soul cleansed as much as it can be. This is part of that process.

I know. My soul. Seems anachronistic, a Greek idea clumsily borrowed by all three of the Abrahamic religions. The notion that there is a something, a part of us that endures after death. A real thing like a Rock or a Lodgepole. For over thirty years I’ve avoided the question by positing extinction as the result of death. No where for a soul to go. No need for a soul. Q.E.D.

Jews have, as usual, many and conflicting thoughts about the soul. For some there are 5 souls. For others none. Right now I’m reading a Rabbi Jamie translation of a 16th century text that works with two: the neshamah and the nefesh. The neshamah is the pure soul, the image of divinity, the uniqueness of that in which it resides. Unstainable. Original sin is a non-starter within all Jewish understandings of the soul and of human nature.

The nefesh surrounds the neshamah with personality, with choice, with the joys and sorrows of fleshly life. Driven by the yetzer harah, the selfish inclination, and the yetzer hatov, the loving inclination, our lifetime represents opportunities to synch up our character with the unstainable neshamah. We fail. We succeed. We start over again and again.

Is this consciousness in which our unique nature, our buddha nature, our I am, rests? I don’t know. Might be. I do like the notion of a sublime me, a sacred me, a shard of the ohr, the light of the divine released into and creating by its release all the known and unknown parts of the universe.

Blood and Seawater. Consciousness. Deep memories from our time in Africa. Consider the vast amount of unknowing. Might there be room for a shard of holiness somehow in me and of me, but not extinguishable even by death? I’m much more open to that idea now than I have been for over thirty years.

 

 

*”Like the Earth, we are 70% saltwater. In 1897 French physician Rene Quinton discovered a 98% match between our blood plasma and sea water, or what we called ‘ocean plasma’.” Oceanography

Family, Mountains, The West, Travel

The Realm of the Mountain Kings

Leave a comment

Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon

Shabbat gratefuls:  Mussar. Gabe. Pain. Quantum mechanics. The empty space on which I sit. Atoms. The creation of Solar nuclear furnaces. Vastness. In Space. In our Inner World. Consciousness. The Boundless. Things that never were and will never be. Faery. The Otherworld. The Multiverse. Heaven. Hell. Reincarnation. Books. Movies. TV.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Guanella Pass

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Been thinking about thinking, as us amateur philosophers often do, wondering if the thinking I’m doing is original, which is unlikely, or if it perhaps is an original reworking, more possible, always remembering that conservative cultures like China view originality and curiosity with deep, deep suspicion which of course makes both that much more dear to me.

 

Gabe and I made it to Guanella Pass while the Aspen retained golden glory. We were not alone. Not quite as good an experience, yet wonderful, amazing anyhow. Geneva Creek ran full, offering Water boiling over huge Boulders, spreading on flat Land, Watering Meadows of golden Grass, Lodgepoles and the Aspen providing color against 12,336 foot Geneva Mountain on the left and 14,049 foot Mount Bierstadt on the right, all against a Colorado blue Sky. Temperatures in the low to mid-60’s. Scented with pine resin and the Ozone smell of Water as Geneva Creek rushed toward the North Fork of the South Platte.

Talk about Yirah. About the sacred in the oh so not ordinary realm of the Mountain kings. Here are a few pictures.

Gabe amongst the Boulders at Geneva Creek
At the Shaggy Sheep
Gabe
Boulders and Aspen and Lodgepoles
Parking area at the Waterfalls

 

Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Mountains, Travel

Shortie

Leave a comment

Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon

Friday gratefuls: Gabe. Celebrex. Tramadol. Ruby. Guanella Pass. The Shaggy Sheep. Bailey, the Bigfoot Museum and Store. Hwy. 285. Leaf peepers. Pain. Mountains. Aspens. Lodgepoles. Valleys. The North Fork of the South Platte River. Living where people come to recreate. Happy Camper. Edibles. Alan. Breakfast tomorrow. Sunrise Sunset Diner. Fall and its sad beauty.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Waterfalls

Kavannah: Yirah

One brief shining: In Grant, turned right off Hwy 285 onto Guanella Pass, 22 miles on to Georgetown on I-70, up hill to 11,669 feet then down hill to Georgetown; at the trailheads to Burning Bear Creek and Abyss trails, enough cars parked alongside the road to fill a football stadium parking lot; Gabe and I turned back not far from there and found the Waterfalls, spent time taking photos, enjoying the fast running Creek and its cascading flow.

 

Photos tomorrow. Short version of the trip. Fun, important with Gabe. Painful. Driving him home after a morning of sightseeing began to hurt as we got on Hwy 470 headed into Denver and continued from that point until I got back home. Don’t think I can continue to do this. I sang songs to distract myself from the painful hip. Worked surprisingly well.

Beat up and drug down by the time I hit my chair. More on this tomorrow.

Politics, Shadow Mountain, The West, US History, World History

Grocery Stores and Shell Companies

Leave a comment

Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Oops, forgot to write yesterday. Great workout. Faint dawn. Pinkish gray Sky. Spinning back into Great Sol’s line of sight. Vince and the decks. Figuring out the workout. Moving closer to the October surprise. Kamala and Tim. Gabe. The Shaggy Sheep. Guanella Pass. Vikings 3-0. Their game against the Packers. Muir Woods. Sequoias.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: finishing up the 529 transfer

Kavannah: Yirah

One brief shining: Richard Power’s new book Playground has an amazing jacket; as I read, just outside the edge of the page, it glimmers like the Ocean, an immersive feeling as if the book itself, about the Ocean, rests within its broad expanse, floating its narrative on gentle waves while underneath those waves giant Manta Rays, schools of colorful Fish, and creatures so bizarre as to be unimaginable if not observed float in its depths.

 

Got up late yesterday. Talked to Tom, turned in an extra good workout, read Power’s new book for a while, watched some TV, and Ancientrails slipped away from my notice. Rare. But it does happen.

 

On Tuesday I made another visit to Safeway, picked up my grocery order. While I waited, I thought about the map of grocery store chains in the morning’s Washington Post. The business logic of an Albertson’s/Kroger merger, at least in the West, is there to see. It would allow Albertson’s to dominate the urban West while Walmart takes care of the rest.

It would affect us in Conifer. With King Soopers, a Kroger grocery, and Safeway, of the Albertson family-our two grocery stores-we’ve been notified our Safeway would close. I used to shop at King Soopers and could return there. With my budget the need for careful comparison between the two is unnecessary. If, however, I had a family and watched the pennies, I’d feel cheated. Especially in this time of inflated grocery costs. I hope the FTC turns down the merger.

 

Tom told an interesting story about the SR-71, a retired spy plane hanging in the Air and Space museum outside Omaha. The docent who gave his group a tour said the titanium needed to build it, a lot, came from Russia during the cold war. How did our cold war enemy agree to something not in their self-interest? They didn’t. The CIA set up several shell companies around the world ostensibly making titanium cookware. Guess the Ruskies never checked how many pots and pans got made. BTW: The SR-71 had a top speed of Mach 3.5 or roughly 2,600 miles per hour.

I mention this because it seems the Israelis pulled off a similar feat with the pagers that exploded in Lebanon. They set up a company in Hungary that made and sold pagers and other small electronic communications devices. That’s a real long game. Explode the pagers to diminish Hezbollah’s ability to respond. Then assassinate leadership through targeted air strikes followed by more air raids aimed at munitions and missiles. An involved plan.

 

Just a moment: An election. Here. Soon.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Plants

Biker Chick

Leave a comment

Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Joanne. Jamie. Susan. Rich. Tara. Marilyn. The Bistro. Its new owners. MVP. That Prius, stolen from Denver, that drove through the fence. Israel. Palestinians. Gaza. Lebanon. Hamas. Hezbollah. Iran. Yemen. The Houthis. The Ukraine. Russia. This violence soaked planet, warming around us. As a planet we are, to the universe, less even than the Mayfly life of a human compared to the Rocky Mountains.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love

Kavannah: Simplicity

One brief shining: She got off the Triumph, its exhaust still hot, helmet in hand, as the Rabbi turned the key silencing the engine, this biker chick, this nonagenarian who had come from her home on Rainbow Hill via Squaw Valley Road, Winter Gulch, and Stagecoach Road before arriving triumphantly at the Bistro for a celebration of her 93rd birthday. Joanne last night.

 

Yep. Not sure whose idea it was but Joanne Greenberg arrived by motorcycle wearing her usual long pants, self-made, a top likewise, a plaid fleece-lined snap up jacket, and a motorcycle helmet. She and Jamie took a scenic drive before getting to the Bistro where Rich Levine generously hosted the 7 of us, Ron as often away on a business trip.

This was an unusual meeting of the MVP group, occasioned both by Joanne’s upcoming 93rd birthday today and Rich’s need to move away from our usual Wednesday evenings. Colorado School of Mines gave him again an honors class to teach on Wednesday nights for this semester. The middah for the evening, led by Tara, was simplicity.

We got special attention from the chef and his partner/wife because Rich is their lawyer. Of course. Small town. The last time I ate there, on August 18th, I found the pearl. Becoming magical for me.

The time around the table, again, underlines relationships. With other humans, core to life. With other beings. Core as well. With other living parts of the natural world, the Mountains and Streams, Lodgepoles and Aspens, Rock and Soil. The Sky. Where and in and on which we live. How could they not be core, too.

Eating. Well. We had Salmon, Mahi-Mahi, Shrimp, Ahi, Scallops, Filet in a salad, dumpling soup, pate, bread, lettuce, tomatoes, creme brulee, vanilla ice cream, chocolate melt cake. Coffee. Wine. All offered to us not only by the Bistro but also by Great Sol whose light shone on the Plants eaten by the food eaten by the Fish, the Scallops, the Shrimp. And on the Plants themselves that we ate: Tomatoes, Potatoes, Lettuce, Radish, Herbs of various kinds. Grapes that were drunk. Water that came from a nearby aquifer, replenished by the summer’s Rain. Is food not necessary? Essential. Oh, yes.

All this and we hadn’t talked yet. We batted around contentment. Simplicity. What is the feeling you get with simplicity. What is freedom from desire, attachment for? To live your imago dei, your buddha nature, your neshama soul. Your I am. We touched on love and gratitude for each other. Saw and were seen. Touched and were touched. Heard and were heard. Tasted the chef’s delicate work and smelled the cool Mountain air as it drifted in through the open window.

We were, each of us, as fully present, in that ichi-go, ichi-e moment as we ever could be.

 

 

 

Politics, Science, US History, World History

The 4%ers

Leave a comment

Mabon (fall) and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Man of La Mancha. Alan. Ovation West. Struggling to hear. As usual. More and more Au in them thar hills. Not pannable though. Rakeable? Yes. Bistro tonight with MVP. Joanne’s birthday. Irv and Marilyn. My son and Seoah. Murdoch. Leo. Bagel. Cream Cheese. Janet’s dogs. Mark in Bangkok. Mary in K.L. I think. Diane in San Francisco. Ruth in Boulder. Gabe on Galena street.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Don Quixote

Kavannah for the week: Yirah

One brief shining: Little boxes, little boxes, arranged in different rows, each with numbers and colors, each an element of matter that makes up the mass of the universe that humans can experience in some way, all combined only four percent of the total mass, the rest hidden from us in dark matter and dark energy. Can you give me a Yirah!

 

The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality Richard Panek. published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on January 10, 2011. No, I haven’t read it. But the title tells you about the puzzling truth that everything we know and love, everything we understand and for now, can understand at least in part, only constitutes 4% of reality. Or, put it another way, we humans have no idea what constitutes 96% of the universe in which we exist. And, in which we exist on a distant suburb of the Milky Way galaxy, home to billions of stars like Great Sol, and thousands of exoplanets (at least) yet only one of hundreds of billions, possibly as many as two trillion galaxies. Each of which contains billions of suns and who knows how many exoplanets.

Mother Earth may be a blue marble to us when we see her in the famous photograph, but she’s not even a grain of sand in the vastness of space. When I investigated elements 1,2, and 3 on the periodic table for the Ancient Brothers, I discovered that hydrogen, #1, makes up 75% of the known universe and helium, #2, 23%. 98% of the known matter in the universe is either a hydrogen atom or a helium atom. Boggles the mind, eh?

Also found something that revealed our oh so anthropocentric perspective on fish, the universe and everything. One writer referred to these elements in the periodic table as normal matter. Don’t know about you but elevating 4% of the material in the universe to normative status just doesn’t make sense. It’s an old conceit and a damning one. The earth as the center of the solar system. Europe and its Caucasian population with a divine right to conquer and civilize the known world. White folks with the right to enslave black folks.

This conceit that first earthlings, then white European earthlings, then enslavers and their latter day fellow travelers now trying to take control of U.S. governance have it right has created so much pain, death, destruction. Let’s find it and name it wherever it is. Then isolate and defang all who carry this disease of the mind, quarantine them, too.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Mountains, Plants, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Fall. Closer to November 5th

Leave a comment

Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon

Autumn’s first morning!

The bare foot knows it

on the newly

washed porch      Ishu

Sunday gratefuls: Snow. 35 degrees. Mountain living. Feeling ready. Chasbon nefesh. Teshuvah. The land of my soul. Shadow Mountain. Books. Writing. Thinking. Seasons. The Great Wheel. The month of Elul. New Year. Soon. Great workout. Barbecue from Fountain Barbecue. Election year 2024. Kamala and Tim. My Lodgepole Companion with their first bits of Snow on their branches.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Fall came bearing Snow, near freezing temperatures, while I slept warm under my summer weight comforter, arising first to a slushy Rain which changed to the first Snow of the season about an hour ago, a slick driveway, the blue Asters a bit forlorn though soon to go to seed anyhow.

 

Firewood. Up here, mostly pine. No self-respecting Minnesotan would burn it. Too much creosote. Actually, a bias. All wood puts out plenty of creosote. Pine does, however, burn faster than hardwoods. By a lot. No loading the fireplace with oak or ash or elm for the night. However. Down the hill I can find hardwood firewood. Lots of deciduous trees in the high plains part of the Denver metro. One outfit has offered to let me go through their piles for Yule logs. I want to find some large oak or other dense hardwood to burn on the Winter Solstice as Yule logs. The concept: don’t let it burn up. Put it out, pull it out, and store it for next year to start the next Yule log.

I plan to pick up some pinõn, too. Sweet smelling. Perhaps some fruit woods as well. Too expensive to have someone deliver. Will store in the garage. Dry. Plan to go as hygge as I can this late fall and winter. Not sure what else I’ll do. Candles. Inviting friends over. Hot chocolate. Cozy blankets.

 

May be confirmation bias, almost certainly is to some extent, but I feel the winds shifting toward Kamala and Tim. In part because of their cash advantage, their ground game advantage energized by the debate, and the recent poll numbers I’m seeing. I respect Nate Silver’s reminder that 20% remains a 20% chance to win and both the orange one and K./T. are polling well above that. I know. I add to those positive trends the apparent disarray in the Trump campaign. He’s not got a good slam against Kamala. His policy positions are unclear-see abortion and taxes-or are too clearly tied to Project 2025.

Momentum, as I wrote a bit ago, carries the day and right now I believe Kamala and Tim have it on their side. And, it feels to me like the pace and inertial force of the momentum increases with each news cycle. May it be so.

 

Only for a moment, maybe 15 minutes, but we did have Snow. Then, cold Rain. 35 degrees this am. With the Aspen colonies flashing their season ending golden signals we have begun Fall on this, the autumnal equinox.